Email Deliverability

3 factors to consider:

1. Email filters
2. Blacklists
3. Software/server configuration

1. Email filters:

The volume of spam has reached epidemic proportions. And spam filters have become essential in helping stem the tide of unwanted junk mail trying to reach your inbox -- 64% of all email traffic is currently spam!

Unfortunately, ALL email filters have a margin of error...

The most worrisome fact is the false positive rate (ie. legitimate email that is incorrectly flagged as spam). Latest research shows that almost 19% of permission-based email does not get delivered to the intended recipients by Internet Service Providers.

Are email filters blocking your non-spam emails?

Getting your opt-in email caught in the spam filters is a serious and growing problem. As a business owner with an opt-in email list, many of your legitimate emails may not be getting through to your clients because of spam filters.

Today, email delivery rates are the number one concern for businesses that use email as a marketing communication tool...

Non-delivery of of your emails lowers your response rate, increases campaign costs, and negatively affects your reputation - if your prospects and customers are expecting an email from you and it never arrives, it doesn't look good!

How much of your opt-in mail is being filtered? How many of your email responses to customer service requests are filtered out? How many leads and sales are you losing every day?

By knowing how to avoid words and phrases that trigger email filters, you can optimise delivery rates, increase response rates, and improve your email performance.

2. Spam blacklists:

A spam blacklist (also called a blackhole or blackhole list) is a list of web addresses and domains of servers that send or support spam.

Being blacklisted means non-delivery of your emails to your customers. And if your emails don't get delivered, you can't get a response.

If you're on a blacklist, ALL your messages will be automatically rejected by internet servers using these blacklists.

Even if you have never sent spam, you could still be on a blacklist!

Most corporates (B2B) use public blacklists, but the majority of ISPs use private/custom blacklists. ISP's private blacklists are based on complaints - if you minimise customer complaints, you'll improve deliverability to ISPs. And if you follow email marketing best practices, you should be able to stay off the public blacklists too.

Do you know if you're on a blacklist? And do you know what to do if you're listed?

3. Software/server configuration:

Email delivery is obviously dependent on using an email delivery system that works. If your software/server doesn't work or is incorrectly configured, you have a far bigger problem to worry about than email filters and blacklists!

Businesses often assume that they have a fully functional email delivery system. However, there are 3 very important things that are often overlooked:

1. Your email should be RFC compliant.
2. Your email server should have valid reverse DNS entries (ie. all sending IP addresses must have active corresponding domain names in DNS).
3. Your email server should be secure (ie. must not be an open proxy, router, or relay).

In future, you will also need to have email authentication set up for your domain.

There are two emerging standards of email authentication: Yahoo's DomainKeys and Sender ID. Sender ID combines Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Microsoft's Caller ID standards. The system allows a domain owner to specify (in its published DNS records) the mail servers authorized to send email from that domain. During the email transaction process, the receiving server looks up the DNS information for the domain the mail purports to be from and makes sure the origin IP address is authorized. If attempted forgery is detected, the receiving server can tag the email as suspicious or reject it completely.

So, assuming your email gets delivered, we'll now consider the 2 factors that determine your overall response rate - open rates and click-through rates.

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